Malicious mischief causes Spokane patrol car accident

A Spokane police officer suffered a back injury in a car accident caused by a malicious prank.

The officer, Deputy Rustin Olson, was responding to 911 calls about a fight involving upwards of 25 people when he ran over debris of rocks and firewood and branches left in the roadway, lost control of his patrol car and crashed.

An anonymous tipster revealed that the debris had been deliberately left on the road by two 16-year-old boys who were being malicious. The boys apparently hid off the road to witness cars driving into the debris.

Now, the two boys face charges of felony malicious mischief.

This is not the first time pranks gone awry have seriously injured drivers or their passengers.

In 2011, two teenagers, 18 and 19 years-old, were indicted on charges of felony manslaughter for causing a car accident when they pulled a prank of concealing a stop sign by covering it with petroleum jelly and plastic wrap. One elderly woman was killed and her sister seriously injured in an intersection accident when they drove thru the stop and collided with an SUV.

In May of this year, a minor car accident was caused when someone removed a stop sign at a Pennsylvania intersection.

Car Accident Caused by Absence of Stop Sign

Some times car accidents are caused by the absence of a stop sign due to the failure of a governmental entity such as a city or county to replace a missing stop.

In one case, Winnebago County, PA, was sued by a motorist and his daughter who blamed his car accident on the absence of a stop sign. The stop sign had been knocked down a few days earlier by another car accident and was not replaced. The motorist claimed that police responding to the earlier accident knew the stop sign was down and that traffic enforcement should have policed the intersection until a replacement sign was put into place.